Use Your Initiative to Fix Something!

after two years of use, the audio amp in my shower room suddenly stopped working.

the power light came on, but nothing came out of the speakers. not even the usual hum i usually got if i turned the volume to 100% with no input connected.

the amp was only £10 from ebay, so i went ahead and ordered another one. but it would take a week to arrive! so i decided to crack open the old one and see if anything could be done to fix it.

i know nothing about amps so i wasn't too hopeful, but thought i may as well have a look as it may be as simple as a blown fuse or something...

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Step 1: Have a Look.

once i'd opened the case and removed the board, a blue relay immediately grabbed my attention. unsure what a relay in an amplifier was for, i looked on the underside of the board to see what it was connected to.

i discovered the relay was in line with the ground of the speaker outputs, meaning that the relay has to switch for the speakers to receive the audio signal.

i plugged the power, audio input, and speaker output back into the amp, and placed a bit of wire to bypass the relay which worked!

then al i had to do was solder a permanent bypass wire and the amp was all working again.

no idea what the relay was for. i guess maybe some sort of output protection, but as i'm using an old speaker which can be easily replaced with another from the loft, i don't mind loosing output protection.

Step 2: Try It Yourself.

i put it all back together and re mounted it, now i can have music in the shower again. hooray! :)

just goes to show, you never know what you can do if you don't try, always open things up and have a look before you chuck them!